First Woman Reportedly Cured Of HIV After Stem Cell Transplant

A woman suffering from leukemia has become the first female, and the third person to date, to be cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus that causes AIDS.

Since the procedure, which was used to treat acute myeloid leukemia — cancer that starts in blood-forming cells in the bone marrow — the 64-year-old biracial woman has been in remission and free of the virus for 14 months, without the need for antiretroviral therapy.

The two prior cases occurred in males — one white and one Latino — who had received adult stem cells as part of the more common procedure of bone marrow transplants.

“This is now the third report of a cure in this setting, and the first in a woman living with HIV,” Sharon Lewin, president-elect of the International AIDS Society, said in a statement.

Professor Sharon Lewin, the president-elect of the international AIDS society, said the woman’s recovery encourages researchers to continue on the path of gene therapy in the search for a cure.

The case is part of a larger study backed by the US and led by Dr Yvonne Bryson of the University of California Los Angeles, and Dr Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The study aims at including 25 people living with HIV to undergo a transplant with stem cells taken from blood in the umbilical cord for the treatment of cancer and other serious conditions.

Usually, stem cell transplants are done by transferring stem cells from one person’s bone marrow or surrounding blood stem cells to the body of another. Most recently, from umbilical cords.

Patients in the trial first undergo chemotherapy to kill off the cancerous immune cells, doctors then transplant stem cells from individuals with a specific genetic mutation in which they lack receptors used by the virus to infect cells.

Scientists believe individuals can then develop an immune system resistant to HIV.

According to research from John Hopkins, the blood that flows through the placenta and umbilical cord has a high concentration of stem cells, which is what is sourced through bone marrow transplants, according to Johns Hopkins research.

The cells are collected after the birth of a baby before the umbilical cord and placenta are disposed of.

Lewin said bone marrow transplants were not a viable strategy to cure most people living with HIV, but the report of treatment using umbilical cord blood “confirms that a cure for HIV is possible and further strengthens using gene therapy as a viable strategy for an HIV cure,” she said.

The study suggests that an important element to the success is the transplantation of HIV-resistant cells.

Previously, scientists believed that a common stem cell transplant side effect called graft-versus-host disease, in which the donor immune system attacks the recipient’s immune system, played a role in a possible cure